Ariel View of New Orleans

What is going on with nature lately? It seems that the U.S. is being hit with everything except the kitchen sink. Is this country so totally unprepared that some of these natural disasters that hit here cause the same amount of damage as they do in the third world? Growing up, I always believed that we could cope with any emergency, but apparently this isn't true. I just heard that we are asking Germany and the Dutch for help in rebuilding the levees around New Orleans. Can this be possible that this great country doesn't have the resources to to rebuild the levees itself.? What happened to all our engineers and scientists? Maybe they are too busy building weapons.

Can you imagine a great U.S. city being completely emptied of its human population? I never thought that I would see the day when this had to happen. New Orleans isn't a huge city, but it does have a population of about 500,000 people, which is quite respectable. It is a very important city because it's port is the world's busiest port complex and is connected to the inland waterway system that is 14,500 miles of waterway systems. The port has been updated to the tune of four hundred million dollars in the last ten years. To give you an idea of the size of the port, it has 22 million square feet of cargo handling area and over 6 million square feet of covered storage area. Over 2,000 vessels can be handled at the port each year. Besides the vessels docking, other ships pass through on their way up the Mississippi River or to the inland waterway. There are about 6,000 of these vessels passing through New Orleans every year. There is even an area where foreign goods can be brought into the country without being subject to customs. This is called a foreign trade zone.

New Orleans skyline

Need something moved from the port? That is easy to do since New Orleans has six class one rail lines, it is the only U.S. port to have this. In addition to the rail lines it has 50 ocean carriers, 16 barge lines and 75 truck lines serving the port. The largest wharf in the world is at the port of New Orleans.

Wouldn't you think that such a valuable asset as this port would be protected? I thought it was, but apparently I was wrong again. One thing that I have noticed about government is that the people who are put in positions of power, I am talking of appointed positions not elected, are usually picked not because of their competence but because of who they know. Because of this, many agencies, city, county, state and federal are loaded with people that not only have no experience in what they are doing but don't have the know how. Some of these people don't even care and only show up to their jobs infrequently, yet let something go wrong and they are the first ones to blame someone else, usually an underling and preferable either someone from the other party or a career civil service worker who was never in any position to make a decision. It makes you wonder how this country even runs. Could you imagine how well the country would run if people that were put into these positions were picked because of talent to do the job? With all the assets that this country has, life would be so much better for all of us.

Katrina was a storm waiting to happen. The levees around New Orleans were chronically under funded. These are not my words but the words of a Congressional investigator testifying before the Congress. As far back as 1965 Congress was aware of the danger to New Orleans from flooding and passed the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity, Louisiana Hurricane Protection Project in the Flood Control Act of 1965. The act authorized the construction of control structures, concrete floodwalls and levees to protect against the flooding caused by hurricanes and storms. The cost was estimated to be about 85 million and it was to take 13 years. This was little enough to pay for a port that handled billions of dollars worth of cargo and a city of half a million people. The funds were to come from joint federal, state and local governments. Forty years later the project was still under construction. What a sin, what monumental incompetence! But there is more, the original project was based on protecting New Orleans and the port from a fast moving category 3 hurricane, not one as powerful as Katrina, so even if the construction had been completed, it might not have helped save the city.

Yes, so even the original plans to protect the city were flawed. Many of the homes were destroyed and we all know that crime was also a major problem as looters ran through the city helping themselves to merchandise, thus causing more destruction and loss. Some people seemed to have been abandoned, such as those at the Superdome while some officials were too busy leaving the city themselves to help. Politicians were telling us that they were helping the people there, yet the thousands there, when visited by the different news agencies, who by the way were able to get there, told stories how they never saw anyone from any government agency. Even FEMA flopped as we now know, resulting in the firing (yeah I know he resigned, but he had to), of it's head politico.

So is there a lesson to be learned from all this? I would say that there is, and it is crystal clear. Some agencies and some things are too important to be left in the hands of politicians. DON'T appoint politicians to the head of an agency like FEMA. Appoint someone with the talent to run it, maybe an ex General or someone from a big corporation that has experience in handling emergency situations on a large scale. Another thing we should have learned is that you shouldn't mess with the funds of important projects, especially those designed to protect lives. Politicians just can't stand to see large sums of money going to any project unless they get their piece of pork and especially projects that are spread out over many years. These projects are just too much temptation for them. They keep thinking what they could do with these funds if they didn't have to go to the project. There has to be some sort of guarantee or even a law passed that these funds CAN NOT be tampered with and which guarantees these funds to the project.